Bangalore University mantra of improving pass percentage? set an easy paper

ET Bureau|

Updated: Sep 20, 2016, 04.07 PM IST

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In a new low, only 40 per cent passed the course in the academic year 2015-16.

BENGALURU: Illustrious names adorn the corridors of the century-old physics department of Bangalore University . Yet, not even half the students who join the post-graduate course manage to pass.

In a new low, only 40 per cent passed the course in the academic year 2015-16. It was the lowest percentage among all postgraduate courses. The university's latest annual quality assurance report acknowledges this.

Administrators put their heads together to improve the results and came up with a simple, albeit novel, idea: Let's give the students a simple question paper.

This year, Damle said, question papers will be framed in such a manner that students will find it easy to pass but tough to score high. At least five other postgraduate courses -chemistry, electronic science, human consciousness and yogic sciences, architecture and statistics -have a low pass percentage.

"The quality of students joining postgraduate courses is bad. Students with the best talent join engineering or medicine after pre-university while the rest join BSc. The problem here is that the BSc in most undergraduate colleges is not good. Until this is fixed, nothing can be done at the postgraduate level," said M Prakash, director of studies at Seshadripuram Educational Trust.

"We have a heterogeneous combination of students," ViceChancellor B Thimme Gowda said. "The difficulty level of a question paper has to increase step by step." The norm in question paper setting, he said, is that 40 per cent of questions should be generic and easy . The next 20-30 per cent questions should be a little more difficult. The last set of questions must be so difficult that only the exemplary students can answer."We need balanced question papers keeping in mind difficulty levels students can handle."

For MS Santosh, an associate professor at the Centre for Incubation, Innovation, Research and Consultancy, this is not a problem of question papers. "The syllabus is too vast and valuation is erratic. There is no proper blueprint with which they evaluate students," said Santosh, a former chemistry department head in a city college.

Serial entrepreneur H Karan Kumar, a former BU academic council member, pointed out that the Visvesvaraya Technological University simplified its question papers in 2004 to improve pass percentages. "So an engineering graduate with 70 per cent is equal to one with 50 per cent marks."

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